JIMBO'S PROFILE

Well maybe we just disagree, but my point was that there's no simple formula for designers to follow that will make a "great game," "great novel," "great movie," etc. It's not just a matter of, for instance and in the case of video games, making sure that pointless minigames and/or diversions are optional. What constitutes pointlessness, anyhow?

I'm not bringing this up to be a pedant - all I want to stress is that any sort of mechanical how-to on creative work is inherently limited (and limiting.) Successful examples of any art form demonstrate knowledge of the prescriptive rules for the given art form, but they almost invariably break some of those rules, as well. That's what I was aiming for with the authenticity spiel: that creative vision really needs to trump all other concerns in the end. I'm wary of advice that could be steering people away from the game they want to make and more toward what their bourgeois audience wants with their burger and fries ;)

Of course, if we're talking about someone who is completely out of game design but insists on making the player run down two thousand more banal hallways full of the same four monsters, all so that he can get to level 99 before fighting the azure dragon king, then I find it hard to imagine that this could ever be part of any real "vision." If that's what you were aiming for with "pointless," then we're probably talking crosswise.